I Sing the Body Electric
by ocha-no-deathscythe
Summary: In which Maka, a desperate and confused computer programmer, tries to fix her crashed computer and discovers that her security software is a little overfriendly. SoMa. AU. Heavy influences from both Tron and every Glitch Mob song in existence.
1. A Dream Within A Dream

Author Notes: So this is finally done oh my dear lord. For those of you who don't follow my Tumblr: This was supposed to be the fic I wrote in commemoration for having 300 followers. I have like 345 now and I am just now posting the first chapter. Hehehe. Anyway, this is heavily influenced by Tron and pretty much every Glitch Mob song ever. I don't own anything. Endless thanks to my ever-faithful beta odat, who has worked uber overtime this past week because I was a butt and dumped like 20k words of my nonsense on her plate and asked her to fix them.

* * *

Maka cracked her neck and sighed as she leaned back against her chair. She'd been hunched in front of her computer for what felt like days. Turning a bleary eye on the clock in front of her, she checked the time.

3:27AM. Six hours since the last time she checked.

Her knees creaked as she stood and she made a mental note to go for a run as soon as she figured what the hell had gone wrong with her computer. It had been a full week since it had crashed and in that time, she hadn't been able to restore its system to proper working order.

Maka navigated her way through the room by the bright light of her monitor, evading piles of books and clothes on her way to the kitchen. Her hands fumbled on the wall, feeling for the light switch. It took a moment for the lights to flicker on, casting a sickly yellow glow on the disaster her room had become. She added cleaning and replacing the light bulb to her mental checklist.

Out of habit, she kept her hand on the wall as she walked, the sound of her yawn filling the empty hallway. Her fingers collided with the light switch of the kitchen as she turned the corner and she flipped it as well, squinting in the relative brightness of the room.

The kitchen was close to spotless, though that was due to lack of use; Maka honestly couldn't remember if she had eaten anything in the past day. Her past four trips to the kitchen had been missions to refill her tea cup. Caffeine alone had kept her running, which explained why her hands shook as she reached for the fridge.

The cold air that blew into her face was a blessing; three days without opening a window had made the tiny apartment stuffy. She'd stripped down to a tank top and shorts to combat the heat, but as soon as she had considered aerating the place—or maybe going outside for fresh air—her system had crashed again and she was struggling to gain back all the progress she had achieved.

Maka thanked any gods who bothered to care that she had such a patient research patrons. Her research was attempting one of the most ambitious (and expensive) feats of technology the world had seen in the past few centuries. Not since the days when 3D printers had finally been able to produce fully-functioning organs had something so wracked the scientific community with controversy.

She made a small noise of success when she spotted a takeout container that was only a few nights old. It was half-filled with macaroni and cheese that was practically coated with black pepper—her personal favorite from a local diner. In the five years that she—being a single girl who had never really had a vested interest in cooking—had been a regular at BJ's, she'd built up enough rapport with the staff to have access to their wireless key. It was not an uncommon sight to see Maka tapping away at her laptop in the wee hours of the morning, occasionally lifting her feet so that the staff could mop up under her feet. From time to time, the owner would appear to try and entice her into drinking some of his hand-blended coffee, but his attempts were unsuccessful. Maka loathed coffee.

Shutting the fridge with a hip, Maka reached into the cabinet to extricate a bowl for her spoils. The small electric kettle was already half full with water from her last visit; she hit its switch impatiently as she turned to the pantry. The shining pinnacle of her culinary exploits was the discovery that breadcrumbs added to macaroni and cheese was delicious and she was not going to let her wisdom go to waste. As she sprinkled the crumbs over her pasta, Maka felt the customary pang of regret that she had been too interested in books and computers as a child to pay attention to her mother's cooking.

Especially after she left, leaving Maka with a father who didn't know the first thing about keeping two human beings properly fed.

There was a clenching in her stomach that was more than just hunger, but Maka brushed her hair back over her shoulder and did her best to ignore it. Breadcrumbs in hand, she performed her task solemnly. She took especial care not to glance at her reflection in the kitchen mirror, unwilling to see the toll her lack of sleep and proper nutrition was taking.

Once the food was in the microwave, she moved to the task of selecting her next cup of caffeine. A week ago, she would have been happily drinking green tea as she worked, but as the situation with her computer worsened, she had needed to fall back on heavier stuff. She'd been living off of Russian black for so long that she was afraid that she was going to need to actually take up BJ's coffee offer just to keep herself awake.

The worst thing about her computer failure was that she hadn't the faintest clue what had gone wrong. She'd been in the last stages of working on another security program for her system—wanting to ensure that she'd have a safe space to execute her experiments—when a sudden blackout had caused her computer to shut off. Though she was fastidious about ensuring that she had high-functioning recovery programs, the security program was seemingly lost. And it was a damn shame, because the Asura was one of the most complex programs she had ever written.

At first Maka believed her woes were simply a matter of having to re-write a program from scratch (as well as doing some work on her recovery programs to ensure that this wouldn't happen again,) but when she rebooted her computer, the system was lagging and unresponsive. The Asura program had access to the entire system and its sudden absence somehow corrupted nearly every other program therein.

By some miracle, her research program—the Meister—remained perfectly functional, likely due to its companion security program. The Meister project was her life's work; had she lost that, her research grant, her job…and whatever respect she had left in her field…would have left with it.

Maka was startled out of her reverie by the obnoxious beeping of her microwave. She hustled to open the door to hush it, hissing in pain as she grabbed the hot ceramic before it cooled. The bowl was quickly deposited on the cabinet. Maka eyed it peevishly as she reached for a mug, slipping in another bag of black tea and pouring the kettle's boiling water over it. She could hear her hopeless father in her mind, telling her as a young child to _always, always pour the water over the tea. _The man was brainless when it came to cooking, but he had been very particular about how his daughter drank her tea. Maka would have happily spent her life ignorant of these pleasantries in exchange for her father to not bring a new woman in the house every week.

She collected the food, ignoring the angry throbbing of her burned hand as she headed back to the dimly lit bedroom. On its desk, her computer made the soft whining noise that Maka had become all too familiar with in the past week. At first the sound had been intermittent, but in the past forty eight hours it had become almost constant. Maka knew enough about computers to know that it signaled an oncoming system failure.

A sigh puffed from her lips as she sat. She pushed back a network of wires to make room for her bowl, grimacing as she took a sip from the bitter tea. It needed sugar. Her eyes flickered to the folding card table on which the fruits of her research sat.

The Resonance looked rather underwhelming, with a simple string of wires connecting a simpler headpiece and a small black box. But the components were all there, and Maka was almost certain that it would work. Everything in the hardware was set in place for experimentation and she had been in the final stage of software preparation when her system had gone awry.

The whining of her computer had gotten louder. Frowning, Maka gave an experimental click to one of her program icons, only to be bombarded with error messages. She growled in frustration and took an angry bite of her macaroni.

Her system was going to completely crash if she didn't do something and she was running out of options. She knew, intellectually, that this was the perfect test for her research, but the risk was astronomical. The Meister program was secure—as was its companion security program—but if anything went wrong, there was a chance that she could lose everything.

Including her life.

There was always the possibility that her backup wiring would fail. Maka had done everything in her power to ensure that it wouldn't, and the chances had been infinitesimal in the controlled environment she had been preparing. But with her computer in its sudden downward spiral and variables running amok, Maka knew that anything could happen.

She took a long draught of her tea. The taste sent another bitter shock through her throat, but Maka found that she was somewhat glad for it. It reminded her that what she was about to do was very, very stupid.

Maka made quick work of the macaroni and cheese, ignoring the strained feeling in her stomach from eating too fast. Wheeling in her chair, she dumped the bowl on her bedside table and grabbed her cell phone. She gave it a hesitant stare as she finished off the rest of her tea and set the mug beside her bowl. The screen cast a bright glow against her face as she powered it up. She felt a brief pang of regret as she flicked through her tiny contacts list. Maka had spent the past three years of her life on research; socializing had never been top priority.

She paused at her father's name. He was the only family that she knew how to contact, and certainly the only one who would actually bother to check on her if she asked.

_Going to test my project. Come check on me tomorrow night. Just in case. _

She stared at the message for a moment. Her fingers hovered over the screen, looking ghostly in the white light cast by her phone. The stale air in her room was oppressively hot; she felt smothered. Exhaling a brief sigh, she poked at the touch screen, deleting her father from the recipient box. In his place, she pulled up the name Black*Star.

Though he was obnoxious, he was her childhood friend and a brilliant programmer. If anyone would be able to help her, it would be him. Her father's presence would only be necessary if the error was fatal. Black*Star was smart enough to call him if he needed to be there.

Maka tried to ignore the nauseous clenching in her stomach as she turned to face the Resonance. Her fingers skimmed lightly over its headpiece, appreciating the skill with which it had been molded. Giriko was a crazy motherfucker, but he was one of the finer craftsmen of hardware that Maka knew. He had taken her crazy tangle of wires and sensors and lined them into a smoothly molded carbon fiber shell.

The piece fit snugly against her head. Though Giriko had modified the Resonance for functionality, Maka had needed to add in padding for comfort's sake. It was like wrapping a very heavy, possibly deadly pillow around her temples. She took a deep breath as she turned in her chair, giving her computer a cautious look. Her fingers reached for the small black box that was the Resonance's I/O console, feeling for the USB port. Though the wiring technology for USBs had been outdated for the past thirty years, Maka had always loved their format. There was a reliability to them that she liked, and she prided herself on always knowing which direction she was supposed to plug it in on the first try.

The blood pounding in her ears made her world shudder. In the back of her mind, she wondered if this was a good idea—maybe she should give another round of frantic phone calls, call in more colleagues? Yet she knew that if she failed in this, it would mean the end of her career. And she'd already run out of time and resources. Just this once, Maka was going to leave things up to chance.

She slid the USB wire into the computer's port smoothly and she felt the brief thrill of pride of getting it right, despite her shaking hands. The whining increased as her computer processed the new hardware. With a prayer that her security systems would be enough to keep the corrupted system from affecting the Resonance, Maka reached for the mouse. She found the tiny scythe-shaped icon for the Resonance's security program, smiling as it booted smoothly.

A small black box flashed on the screen.

_Ready to receive Meister. Resonate?_

Maka double-clicked the Meister program. The consciousness transfer was instant, so she was quite unaware of pain as her face crashed into the keyboard.

* * *

"It's about damn time you got your sorry ass in here."

The voice was gruff. It sounded like it was speaking through a heavy filter and for a moment, Maka had difficulty understanding its words.

Her eyes had an even harder time adjusting. Even the light behind her closed eyelids was too bright; she struggled to find her hands so that she could throw them over her face and shield her eyes. She felt slow and sluggish, as if there was a distinct lag between her brain signals and her body's ability to register them.

She made a mental note to try to patch that.

"I've spent too long cooped up in here, waiting for you to arrive. The least you could have done was program some kind of communication outlet. This whole 'only speak when spoken to' thing gets really obnoxious, you know."

Inner gyroscope adjusted, she could sense that the voice came from somewhere above her. It still sounded faintly robotic, but the words were now distinct. A combination of its inflection and tone led her to think it was male.

This surprised her. When Maka had conceptualized the Resonance—a machine for directly applying one's consciousness into the computer—she had never imagined that it would manifest into physical forms. The Meister program was supposed to be a host for loading and storing conscious memory in the system. But her mind had been loaded into a body of some sort.

She flexed her fingers, running them into her hairline. These fingers could register the sensation of touch and whatever she was running them through certainly felt like hair. Wonder bloomed in her—could the voice belong to another program with physical form? Was there an entire world here in her computer that she had been entirely unaware of?

Something brushed against her arm. She could feel its slight warmth through the fabric that covered her skin. The shadow behind her hands darkened and she could feel something else rest on her other shoulder.

The realization that these things were hands dawned on her only a few seconds before she was roughly shaken.

"You need to get up," the voice growled. It was much closer now. "I've been waiting for you for a long time and we've got shit to do."

One of her hands flung out, swatting in the direction of the voice. It found flesh with a loud smack and he—or it, whatever it was—released her quickly, muttering curses.

"This is for your own good, Meister. You would have had more time to be a pretty princess if you'd arrived sooner, but you let this come down to the wire." The voice was above her again, but he didn't attempt to grab her arms this time. "Though I suppose…" his tone lowered, a finger stroking lightly along the wrist of the hand still plastered on her face, "if you want to play at being a princess, I could wake you with a kiss."

Her eyes flew open. Though the light of the room was blinding, she could make out the shape of his face and the sharp curve of his grin. His spare hand lifted, curving over her face to help shade her eyes. The other curled about her wrist, pulling her hand from her face. The smile softened as he turned his head to look at her, expression filled with wonder.

"Green." There was reverence in his tone. "I'd always wondered what they'd be. They suit you."

Maka squinted as she tried to infer his meaning. The fingers that had pulled at her wrist stroked her hairline and down the curve of her skull, finally resting at the nape of her neck. As the voice's owner leaned in, she was aware of a faint red light washing over her face. She realized with a start that the light was coming from his eyes—they fluoresced an unnaturally bright red as his face neared hers.

"Shall I give you that kiss then, my lady?"

The hand that he'd cast aside whirled in for another smack.

"I can get myself up just fine," Maka said imperiously. "Now get off me, you brute."

"Brute?" Though his tone spoke of offense, he backed away, offering minimal assistance as Maka sat up from the table where she had been laying. "I'd prefer the name you gave me."

"I don't have the faintest clue who you are," Maka groaned. Sitting up had made the world spin and her stomach churn, but she did her best to glare at the man beside her. "What name could have I given you?"

"Security Operation Utility Liaison."

Maka turned to face him, her expression shocked. "You're…SOUL?"

* * *

Quick thing: those caps there in that last line are from an acronym, she's not yelling.

THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR PATIENCE AND FOR PUTTING UP WITH MY WORDVOMIT I LOVE YOU ALL


	2. Fistful of Silence

Author Notes: Oh wow you guys have all been so supportive and your reviews have been so kind. Thank you to everyone who has been encouraging about this story! (And to the people who keep reblogging the link on Tumblr.) I'm doing a format with shorter chapters for this story, but I should be updating it once a week if I can keep on schedule. As always, I don't own anything.

* * *

He nodded, the grin spreading once again. Maka noted that his teeth were jagged. Shark teeth. She wondered what part of her programming caused that manifestation. The bright light of the room reflected harshly off his stark white hair.

"In the flesh. So to speak." He tilted his head as he spoke, rubbing ruefully at the cheek that she had smacked.

"But I didn't program you to have flesh…." She cautiously looked past her companion, examining her environment. She was in a room: small, tightly enclosed, and distinctly lacking doors. Wide, rectangular lights lined both floor and ceiling—too bright for her to look at directly. Built into one of the walls was a small bench; Maka realized that, until she had awoken, that bench must have been where her security program—Soul—had sat.

Sympathy washed through her as she looked on at the white-haired program. If she had any idea that her programming was capable of manifesting in this way, she would have given him a less crowded place to stay.

Soul shrugged. "Sometimes things work out differently than you intended. You're the Admin, not me."

Maka tilted her head at him. "Admin?"

"You're the Administrator. The user of the system?"

"But earlier you called me 'Meister," Maka remarked. She flexed her feet experimentally, trying to get a feel for her new legs.

Soul nodded. "The body you're in is the Meister. It's a program form that is compatible with your consciousness, which is the Admin. Or at least, that's what they call you out in the System."

Maka's eyes widened with relief. "You can leave here? You can go out into the System?"

The program shook his head. Arms folded, he looked profoundly uncomfortable. "I have minor communicative abilities with other programs within the system, but I can't leave. And I can't confer with them unless they speak first."

"But why—"

"You tell me." Frustration transformed his grin into a grimace. "_You're _the one that did the programming."

Maka looked down at her feet, chastised. They peeked out under a white jumpsuit, the legs of which ended just under her heel. There was a part of her that was thankful that, despite the unforeseen fleshy ramifications of her programming, she had manifested with clothes on her body. Soul was wearing something similar, though it was black rather than white.

"I didn't know."

"I know." His tone softened and the feet moved hesitantly in her direction. The warm pressure of his hand rested against the small of her back. "You're just as confused as the rest of us. I get that. But—" he patted her firmly, "—the only way for us to fix the situation is for you to get up and get a move on. We've got a system to save."

Maka slid off the table slowly, hissing at the sensation of the cold floor touching the soles of her feet. Every sensation her new body experienced seemed overwhelming. Soul hovered beside her, the red glow of his eyes making the arm of her jumpsuit appear pink.

"Do you know what happened here?" She took the steadying arm he offered as she stretched out her ankles. Though her eyes were beginning to adjust, her muscles felt strained with even the slightest movement.

"Only partly." Soul's brows furrowed as he spoke. "Everything was fine until the Asura program."

Maka nodded. "That's when the computer started acting up, as well." Confusion flooded the program's expression. "The computer. It's the physical form that houses this system." Her laughter echoed loudly in the small room as his eyebrows threatened to become one with his hairline.

"There are other systems?" Though he tried to sound incredulous, the program couldn't completely mask the wonder in his voice.

"Yep. I never connected you to any networks for fear of it messing with the system, so you've been entirely self-contained, but someday I'll connect you and you can go see these other systems for yourself." Maka smiled up at him, cheeks heating up as he leaned in to bare his shark grin once more. His jumpsuit was skintight, doing little to conceal the well-defined muscle underneath. The girl wondered at how he, who was never supposed to uphold physical form, could uphold it so _well_.

Realizing that she was ogling a _program_, Maka straightened. She cleared her throat in an attempt to mask her embarrassment. "Well, if we're going to go save this system, we're going to need more appropriate clothing."

"What's wrong with this?" Soul's tone was defensive as his free hand struck his collarbone. Maka rolled her eyes.

"Where I come from, walking around in clothes like this is indecent."

"I like the suit."

"Well I don't." Maka shot a glare that effectively silenced his next interjection. "I'll feel too embarrassed to think straight if I walk around like this. Besides, reprogramming us new clothes will give me practice for the things I need to fix."

Soul's face was sullen as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. He sat on his bench with a low growl, the sound alarmingly similar to the death rattle of a computer. Maka turned to chastise him, but the look on his face so amused her that she found herself giggling. Less than ten minutes into her foray of the world in her computer and she'd already made her security program pout.

Though he growled again, the sound fell on deaf ears. Maka's consciousness had temporarily detached from the Meister program, searching out a way to access the programming code directly.

It was a strange process. Without a body to interpret sensations for her, the sudden onrush of data that flooded her brain was hard to process. She could neither see nor hear nor feel the code as it passed, but her memory of those senses gave the code phantom meaning. Enclosed in an endless space of code, Maka felt claustrophobic. Though her lack of a body gave her no physical sensation of fear, its psychological nature plagued her.

It took her a moment to compartmentalize her fear enough to actually read the code. Though initially it had felt as if she were immersed, the code moving around her, Maka realized that she was perched upon a sort of web. The sensation of moving code was due to her own mental twisting, attempting to get her bearings. Once she had control of her fear, she could feel that the code around her was actually static.

Conjuring up the sensation of the Meister body, she searched for its programmed code. She remembered it well; she'd gone over the program at least a few hundred times to make sure that nothing was left to chance. And though her efforts to completely control the situation had been evidently unsuccessful, she could still recite the code that she _had_ written verbatim.

When she finally caught the tail end of one of her Meister scripts, her consciousness vibrated with joyful crowing. Once she had a handhold on that little scrap of code, it was easy for her to feel out where the rest of the program was. Though it felt smaller than it had on her computer, as she filtered through the code, she realized that what she had written was only the skeleton of the program. Under her code were large subsections written in a programming language she had never seen before.

It was a simple thing, almost as basic as binary, but it had a concise nature. Its patterns were predictable and it took little time for Maka to discover how to read it. Writing, however, took a little more effort.

After searching out Soul's code, she used his subsections to cross-reference the subsections in her own. Lacking physical form, Maka could sense both swaths of code and process them simultaneously, which made the process much faster. Identifying the subsection that dealt with her Meister's clothes, she jury-rigged a section of code, taking out the horrid jumpsuit and replacing it with an attempted replica of her favorite skirt and jacket. Soul's took more time to formulate, but she managed to pull together a shirt and a pair of pants for him. Brimming with pride, she felt out the consciousness port of the Meister and returned to her programmed body.

The return to physical sensation hit her like a sack of bricks. Her mind screamed in protest of the sudden overstimulation of her senses, and the lag between mind and body had returned, making it difficult for her to voice her frustrations. Soul had, for some reason, dragged her to the bench while she had been coding and she was laid across his lap, feet squished up into the alcove against the wall. His arms were wrapped around her protectively and her face was awash with the soft red light of his gaze. Though she wanted to swat at him, her effort to move her arms resulted only in an odd twitching in her hands.

"Whuuaii?" Her voice was slurred, slow enough to detach sound from meaning. Soul looked confused, his nose wrinkling as he squinted at her. The light on her face dimmed.

"Come again?" There was warmth in his voice that sharply contrasted the robotic tone of his speech. Maka found herself wishing that she could hear what his voice would have sounded like if he were a real person.

The sobering thought brought some clarity to her mind. A real person. Her hand twitched once more before she managed to reach up and pull one of his hands off of her shoulder. "Why…why did…you…move me?" The words stumbled from her clumsy lips, but they were clear enough for Soul to understand. He chuffed in sudden laughter.

"The Meister was about to fall. I caught it before it hit the floor." He ran a hand through his hair. The sound it made was like soft static. "It wouldn't do to let any harm come to my Meister. My entire purpose is to protect it…." He let go, moving out from under Maka so that she could sit up. As she did so, he extended a hand to help her stand. She took it bemusedly and they stood, newly coded shoes scuffing the floor. Soul leaned towards her to mutter in her ear. "I _will _protect you."

Maka had enough control of herself to punch him lightly on the arm, though she found herself smiling. "Turning on the charm, I see."

Though he smiled in response, the seriousness had not left Soul's face. His voice was low as he stepped back from her, pulling at his new shirt. "When you spend your entire life staring at someone, waiting for her to wake up, occasionally you think of charming things to say."

"I am sorry." Maka swayed on her feet, getting reaccustomed to the sensation of legs. The transition in and out of physical form was proving to be more difficult than the transition between forms. "There's a subset of code to all of this that I was unaware of until now. I think that's what gives the System form...but I can't see it from my computer. I can only alter it from here. It was never my intention to stick you in this little room by yourself with nothing to do."

Soul flashed his grin, shoving his hands into his pockets with enthusiasm. "Yeah, you're not that pointlessly cruel. Besides, you gave me these things, so you're forgiven."

Confused, Maka raised an eyebrow. "You mean pockets?"

"Ah, so that's what these things are called?" Soul's fingers wiggled under the fabric. "Pockets…." He sounded out the new word like an interesting new piece of food. "I like them. They're a lot more useful than the thing I was wearing before."

Maka placed a hand on her hip. "Well I'd like to say that I'm not going to tell you I told you so, but…."

Soul shrugged. "The way I see it, you can always bring it back if you want to stare at me some more." The light in his eyes got brighter as he leaned forward. "Or you can just take the clothes off entirely."

Maka hit him harder this time.

* * *

It was a short chapter this time, but you'll get a longer one next week. Thanks again to everyone who has supported me in this- odat, for being a great beta and friend; Marsh of Sleep, eisschirmchen, and luerdelaube for their enthusiasm and providing a lot of laughs as they talked about Software!Soul. You guys are all awesome. Have a good day, ne?


	3. Palace of the Innocents

Author Notes: As promised, posted pretty much immediately before I'm about to clamber onto a plane and say goodbye to my home state for a while. I'm not sure when I'll get the next update to you, since this next week is going to be one of flux in which internet may or may not be a thing. But, as always, thanks to the people who support me and I don't own anything.

* * *

"The first thing we need to do is fix how long it takes you to adjust when you move in and out of the code."

Soul had gone full security mode, converting the table that the Meister body had lain upon into a planning board after Maka had gone back into the code to summon up paper and a couple pens so that they could write out their plan of attack. She was still readjusting on the bench while Soul was squinting at the paper, dimming the reddish glow of his eyes.

"Don't we need to find some sort of food?" she asked, recalling the pain she had felt in her stomach before she had engaged the Resonance.

Soul looked up, confused. "Food? You mean the stuff that people eat?"

Maka nodded, pulling herself into a seated position.

"We don't need to eat here," the white-haired program responded, returning his focus to the paper. "We get all our energy from the System."

"Will _I_ be okay, though?"

Soul grinned. "Yep. The Meister is a program, just like me. It doesn't need food." Nor did it need to breathe, Maka realized. Though her lungs went through the motions of breathing, they came back airless. She realized that Soul only ever breathed when he needed to speak. He was eerily still as he examined the paper.

"Okay, so if you never needed to eat, then why do you know what food is?" Maka's lips curled sardonically. "I mean, you didn't know what pockets were until a little while ago."

Soul replied without looking up. "Stein."

Maka repeated the name, toning it as a question. Soul was silent for a moment, but then he made a quick mark on the page and looked up.

"I believe that you named him St/In—Statistics and Inquiry."

"My database program? Is he…like you?" Maka stood, grabbing onto the wall as her legs wobbled.

"Sort of. I'm pretty sure he has a form like us, but I don't actually know, since I've never seen him. But we've spoken before."

"He spoke to you?" She moved, still leaning against the wall.

"Yeah." He reached out a steadying hand, helping Maka walk to the table in the center. "Every Update, he'd come around and make archiving inquiries. I'd answer his questions and throw in a few of my own. He always answered. I liked him."

Maka gave him a concerned glance. Her database had gone rogue a couple days ago and she'd had to search for any System information manually.

"Yeah. At some point, Asura's corruption finally got to him and he…got weird. I stopped answering his inquiries because I didn't want to risk corruption, so he tried to force his way in."

"And?"

"My function is security. I did my job." The response was bitterly short.

Silence filled the room. Soul went still again, hand still wrapped around Maka's elbow to help her remain standing. She leaned heavily on the table as she inspected his paper. He'd drawn a map of sorts, though it was vague and amateur.

"So Stein told you about food?"

Soul nodded. "Yeah. Though he knew more than anyone else in the System, he was restrained only to knowledge that was here. Until he met your other database." Soul turned to her, a confused look on his face. "Thank you for reminding me about that. I had meant to ask you what happened there. Stein always wanted to keep an air of mystery to it because he's a theatrical bastard when he wants to be."

"Other database?" Maka frowned. "I only wrote one database for this system, though, and that was Stein."

"That's the thing, though," Soul frowned. "She wasn't from the System. She just appeared one day and then she was gone. Stein was able to receive all her data before she left, but she didn't tell him where she came from. He called her Marie."

"Marie?" Maka giggled. "You mean my flash drive?"

"I have no idea what that means, Meister."

"It's a data storage device in the outside world. It's one of the ways you can move information and programs from one system to another without connecting them." She stretched experimentally, grateful to find that her limbs responded in a timely fashion. "And I have a name, you know."

Soul tilted his head, humming an unspoken question.

"Maka." She extended her hand, taking his when he stared at it with uncertainty. "My name's Maka. Also, it's polite for you to shake someone's hand when you do introductions."

"I wouldn't know, since everyone I've met has been on the other side of a wall." His grip was firm as he slowly shook her hand. "Maka, huh? What does it stand for?"

She snorted as she removed her hand from his. "It doesn't stand for anything. Not everyone's name is an acronym."

Soul responded with a sardonic smile that was a damn good imitation of the one she'd given him earlier. "That's a shame. I guess I'll just have to make you one."

"You might want to focus your energy on helping me fix this system, first," she teased, tapping at his scribbled map. "And finish telling me how the love affair between my flash drive and system database relates to the fact that you know what food is."

"If you want me to finish my story, I suggest you stop interrupting me, Maka." He tapped her lightly on the nose. She tried to ignore how much she liked the sound of her name on his lips. "Anyway, as I was saying, Stein met Marie and drained her for all the information he could get. He's like that. But she was a pretty big database—"

"Flash drive," Maka corrected.

"Whatever. The point is: she had a bunch of stories stored, all tales from the outside world. After Marie disappeared, Stein traveled around and retold the tales to programs in the System when he did his data collection." Soul frowned. "He used to sit outside the wall and tell me stories while he was compiling the results."

"I kept my eBooks on Marie."

Soul raised an eyebrow.

"eBooks are what people outside the System call stories," Maka explained. "We also keep them in things called books, which are made of paper, like this." She indicated the map on the table.

Soul rolled his eyes. "I know what a book is."

"Is that how he went from being St/In to Stein?" Maka's voice was thoughtful. "Did he base that off of—"

"Frankenstein? Yep." Soul scratched at his scalp and his hair made that strange, static noise again. "It was always his favorite. I never really understood why he was so fond of it. I liked Grimm's Fairy Tales a lot more…they're pretty cool."

"So you have a taste for the gruesome?" Maka smiled.

"I suppose," Soul replied. "But I confess that I always preferred the parts when the knights rescued the fair princesses and won their hands in marriage." Something in his tone told Maka that he was trying to be charming.

This made Maka frown. "So you're the knight and I'm the princess?"

Soul's low chuckle vibrated in her bones. "No, my Meister, you're the dragon."

/

Apparently it was common knowledge amongst the Programs what was wrong with their System.

"We called it the Unplanned Reboot," Soul said, reclining in the bed that Maka had conjured for him. She'd gone into the code again, trying to make the small space more comfortable. Soul had advised her against making the space larger, not wanting to attract attention from the outside. So Maka had resorted to writing in two small beds, taking out the table in the middle and replacing it with one that was smaller.

If Soul had been enthusiastic about pockets, his reaction to the bed could only be described as bliss. He'd refused to leave his cushy throne ever since she'd finished its coding.

Maka was getting better at working with the subset code. The System somehow wrote it automatically whenever she wrote her own code, filling in blanks that Maka hadn't even known were there. She developed a system of letting the code write itself and then going back to correct it, referencing the programs around her to double-check her work. Though her lines were clumsy, they got the job done.

At some point when she was examining Soul's code, she discovered the typo that had caused his jagged shark teeth. She'd fixed it, but Soul had howled in protest until she went back and returned his teeth to normal. He claimed that he might need them to bite someone. When Maka had asked him who he would possibly need to bite, he'd flashed her a lewd grin and patted the bed beside him. Lacking the energy to hit him again, Maka simply threatened to change his code and give him normal teeth. This mollified him long enough for Maka to recover her physical functions. Though she had no need for drink in this form, she found herself craving tea. She wondered if she could manage to program a cup of tea, and if the Meister could even drink it if she did.

The amount of time it took to readjust to her physical form was shrinking, less like a sack of bricks to the face and more like overstepping a stair. With more practice, Maka figured that she'd be able to make the transition virtually seamless.

Instead of going back to the code, Maka turned to look at her security program. He'd gone completely still again, staring up at the ceiling. When Maka had written in the beds, she'd also dimmed the lights in the room and removed the ones on the floor, allowing for more normal lighting. It made the red glow of Soul's eyes more pronounced.

His stillness ceased when she asked him what had happened to the System.

"Unplanned Reboot?" she kept her tone neutral, but she had a feeling she knew what it meant.

"The System just stopped," Soul explained. "No warning, no Update. Just nothingness. No one knows why or how it happened, but when it did—"

"I was in the middle of writing the Asura program," Maka said. She took a deep breath—out of habit rather than need—and sat up to face Soul. His eyes were wide.

"What you call the Unplanned Reboot is something called a blackout. They're very rare outside the System, and a lot of people have backup generators to keep their computers running smoothly. I've been living so close to the bone, though, that I skipped out on the generator. I figured that I'd get one before I started my experiments with the Resonance, but the decision bit me in the ass."

Soul looked even more confused. "Living close to the bone?"

"I was really poor. I've worked hard on this System and the Resonance, but because of that, I didn't have the money to buy all the stuff I needed, generators included. Do you know what money is?"

Soul nodded. "Yeah, they talk about it a lot in your eBooks. It seemed like something a lot of people outside the System were concerned about."

Maka's laugh was bitter. "In some ways, you could say that it was the only thing they were concerned about."

Sympathy thickened his voice, his expression strained. "You were…okay, right? You didn't need food, or anything?"

Maka shook her head. "No, BJ would never let that happen."

"BJ?"

"He owns a diner…a place where you can buy and eat food…near where I live. If I were starving, he'd know and he'd stuff food down my throat. And coffee." She spat out the last word with vehemence.

"Do you not like coffee?"

"No." Maka's voice was too loud in the small room, and it seemed to shatter the sleepy atmosphere of the room. She lowered her voice sheepishly. "No, coffee is really bitter and gross. Tea is better."

"I do wish I could taste them."

Maka smiled. "Maybe someday I'll be able to program some for the both of us. I kinda miss drinking tea. But we have to take care of this system first."

The program nodded in agreement. "We need to get the Asura program under control."

Propping herself up on her elbows, Maka gave Soul a confused look. "The Asura? But I thought that the program was lost."

Soul's laugh was bitter. " No, it wasn't. It's the reason why the System is so messed up."

"How?"

He caught her gaze, unblinking stare making her uncomfortable. "When the Unplanned Reboot—"

"—blackout," she interjected. His responding roll of the eyes was quite impressive.

"When the _blackout_ occurred, the recovery programs managed to restore almost everything to its natural state. But the programs assigned to restoring the Asura didn't do their recovery functions correctly; he was left alone and unfinished." A note of sympathy resonated in Soul's voice. "He managed to save himself, but he became paranoid. He believed that you were trying to delete him…that every Update that the System went through was filled with orders for us to delete him. Since then, he's been corrupting more and more of the System."

Maka frowned. "Corrupting it how?"

"We're not exactly sure. Stein had been working on a theory that the Asura was able to somehow alter the code around him…."

"Did it not pan out?"

Soul's shoulders made a soft noise against the sheets of his bed as he shrugged. "I never found out. He left to go test his theory, came back here to Update, and by then it was too late."

"We'll save him." Maka rolled onto her side, catching Soul's eyes. There was an intense quality to them, but Maka's expression made him soften. She hoped that he sensed her sincerity. "Stein was a good program. Not only because of his usefulness to the System but also for the friendship he shared with you."

Her security program's murmured thanks made a tired smile form on her face as silence fell over the small room again. Maka felt her eyelids drooping, and she found it strange that the body of a program, which needed neither food nor air, still seemed to need sleep.

"Soul?" Her voice was soft as she called out to him.

"Yes, Maka?" It seemed that he was tired as well, voice low and thoughtful. It seemed to Maka to be somewhat less robotic. Or perhaps she was just getting used to the way that he spoke. It struck her that she had been locked in this tiny room with him for what must have been an entire day...and it was the most human interaction she'd had in quite some time. Sort of.

"Do programs sleep?"

Soul was slow to respond. "In a way. We…Update. We slow down and reboot…fix our software. Updates used to be pretty regular, but after the Unplanned—the, uh, blackout…they've been irregular and difficult to trust."

Maka closed her eyes, wishing that she had thought to code herself a blanket. "Do you Update?"

"Yeah. My Updates have been safe, as have the Meister's. We're closed off from the rest of the system. But…it was a bad Update that got Stein."

Maka made a soft noise in her throat. "I'm sorry."

"Not your fault. And besides, you're here to fix it. We'll get him back soon."

Silence reigned once more. She was exhausted, but the brightness behind her eyelids kept her awake, and she began shivering from cold before long. Maka was considering pulling up the sheet from her bed as a way of keeping herself warm when Soul spoke again.

"Are you cold?"

Maka didn't have the energy to lie.

The bed on the other side of the room creaked softly as Soul got up and moved to hers. His fingers lingered on the edge of the mattress; Maka didn't need to open her eyes to know how uncertain he felt.

"It's okay," she said. "I'm the dumb one that forgot to make us some blankets."

Maka managed to crack an eye open so that she could see his smile. His eyes made her bed awash with soft red light as he climbed in beside her, carefully positioning himself between her and the wall.

"Are you gonna hit me if I try to put my arms around you?" His sleepiness made it difficult for Maka to tell if he was teasing or genuinely peeved. She shook her head, moving closer to him in response.

He pulled her body to his slowly, the sudden warmth of another person beside her an alien sensation. Yet Maka was glad for it, nuzzling closer to his heat. Soul tucked her head under her chin, his arms warm but greatly restricting her ability to move. Maka shoved her cold toes between his calves, giggling as he hissed.

"Do you ever get cold?" She was half asleep, voice muffled by the press of his chest against her face.

Soul didn't speak for a long time. Just as Maka thought that he might have begun Updating, his voice rumbled in his chest, vibrating against her forehead.

"I think this might be the first time I've ever been warm."

* * *

Side note: Soul spent a lot of time telling St/In to "tell him the one with the knight and the princess again." St/In was always trying to tell other stories, especially Frankenstein, but Soul was stubborn and insisted on hearing the fairy tales again. He and St/In were also under the impression that pockets were a sort of hipsack, like a fanny pack. They never really paid much attention; they were more interested in things like food and money and what the moon looked like. Maka didn't have many scientific books on her flashdrive.


	4. Fortune Days

A/N: hehehe please don't kill me. I am so sorry that it took me this long to update. Thanks for fabulousanima, who helped me beta this on the most last minute basis imaginable.

* * *

"UPDATE COMPLETED."

Maka jolted awake, startled by the loud voice in the small room. She glanced around nervously, trying to find the source of the noise, before realizing that the voice she'd heard was her own.

"Oh thank God."

The utterance took her by surprise, but she reminded herself that her database program, calling himself 'Stein' out of a disturbing sense of kinship with Shelley's Victor Frankenstein, had somehow accessed her eBooks and then retold them as entertainment for other programs in the System. It was not too far-fetched to believe that one of them had picked up the lexicon.

Especially a white-haired program who liked Grimm's Fairy Tales the most—the same program that was hovering over her like a concerned dog, hair falling into his face.

"Care to explain the relief?" Apparently the Meister body didn't experience grogginess after an Update. If anything, Maka's mind felt sharper than it had before, information springing readily to her mind. Yes, this was her Security Operation Utilty Liason, whose name was shortened to Soul, lover of stories. He'd lived in this small room his entire life and his eyes were the reason for the red light that washed over her and made the white strands of his hair glimmer pink. He also seemed to be somewhat embarrassed.

"I'd thought...well." Static echoed in the room as he ran a hand through his hair. "Every time I've come back from an Update, I've gotten up to check on the Meister. The body was always inactive and I was alone. So when I woke up and you were still, I thought…."

"—that you were alone again." Maka smiled at him. "Don't worry, Soul, I'm fine."

He smiled at her, toothy grin filled with sharp points, and held out a hand to help her sit up. Though she didn't need the assistance, she took it anyway, glad for the contact.

Out of habit, she bent forward to touch her toes and was shocked at how easy it was in this body. A part of her wondered if it was a sign that the Meister body was exceptionally fit, or that her actual body was in worse shape than she thought. Maka made another mental note to take up yoga if she ever managed to fix her computer; the list was becoming exceptionally long.

Soul watched her with a sort of bemused interest, tapping a rolled up sheet of paper against his thigh. He waited until she had finished stretching before holding the paper out to her.

"You've got a message. Somebody called Black*Star?"

Maka nodded, too distracted with the realization that she'd already spent an entire day in the System to notice how Soul covered his ears when she unrolled the paper.

"MAKA."

The sound of her programming colleague's voice boomed through the room, causing Maka to start. The paper fell to the floor, but the message continued unhindered. She wondered if an Update could fix a shattered eardrum.

"THIS IS YOUR GOD SPEAKING. WAS IN THE AREA SO I LET MYSELF IN TO CHECK ON YOU A LITTLE EARLY.

THE COMPUTER IS STILL MAKING THAT WHINY NOISE, BUT NOTHING SEEMS TO BE ANY MORE OUT OF CONTROL THAN IT WAS BEFORE. THERE'S BLOOD ON THE KEYBOARD THOUGH. THINK YOU FACEPLANTED WHEN YOU TURNED ON THE RESONANCE. TOOK THE LIBERTY OF THANKING GIRIKO FOR YOU. WITHOUT THAT HELMET HE MADE FOR YOU THE DAMN THING PROBABLY WOULD HAVE BROKEN ON IMPACT."

'Is there some way of muting this?' Maka mouthed in Soul's direction. Even with her own palms pressed to her ears, the volume of Black*Star's voice was unbearably loud.

Soul rolled his eyes. 'Unfortunately not.'

"HELPED MYSELF TO WHAT WAS LEFT IN THE FRIDGE," the message continued. "AFTER YOU GET OUT OF THERE, I AM BUYING YOU DINNER. YOU LOOK LIKE SHIT. BLACK STAR OUT."

The last bellow resounded in the room and then fell blessedly silent, leaving Maka with a distinct ringing in her ears. Gingerly, she picked up the sheet of paper that had fallen to the floor, giving Soul a sympathetic glance.

"Was it always this bad when I sent messages into the System?"

Soul shook his head as he leaned against the wall. "No. No, with you it was always pleasant. I liked hearing your voice. It was…a way to break the monotony. This is the first time the message has been so loud…" he tilted his head, "but then again, it's also the first message from someone other than you."

Scanning the written message to check if it was the same as the spoken message, Maka laughed. "Actually, he's just like that. Black*Star is…obnoxious."

Soul snorted derisively. "To say the least. Though I must ask: he's not…the one the stories call God, is he?"

The message was on the floor again, fallen from Maka's hands. She stood there, mouth agape, her face a mask of horror. "No! If he were God, I think every person on Earth would kill themselves out of despair."

"Good point," Soul conceded. "I did think it was strange that he introduced himself as your 'god,' so I figured I'd ask."

"He just has an overblown sense of importance." Maka collected the message again, rolling it back to form. It somehow stayed in its tubular shape without the need of adhesive, which Maka found curious. When she had more time to spare, she'd return to the System and research the phenomenon, but for now, she had more pressing matters to attend to. "Is there a way to respond to this?" she asked.

Soul nodded. "There's a terminal here that we can use to communicate with the admin. It only opens when a line of communication has been established by the user, though."

"'Only speak when spoken to?'" Maka repeated sheepishly. "I promise to fix that."

"You'd better," Soul teased. "Especially if I get stuck in this tiny room again."

"I'll fix that, too."

A slow smile formed on the program's face. It had a gentler nature than his grin, and it caused a small dimple to form on his right cheek. "If you keep those promises, I'd be happy enough to kiss you."

"Don't try your luck," Maka warned, though she smiled despite herself. "The Meister giveth and the Meister taketh away."

Soul quirked an eyebrow. "Well you already gave me these clothes, so I'll admit that I am looking forward to the day that you 'taketh away.'"

Maka weighed out the benefits of smacking him again, then shrugged. "I'm getting better at working with this native code for the System, and I don't need a template to rewrite anything. With a little more practice, I should be able to code freely." She stood, a wicked smile curving on her face. "I can do most anything, once I master that." Mimicking a yawn, she let her gaze drift down to Soul's crotch, ignoring the blush that threatened to warm her cheeks as her eyes deliberately lingered there. "I don't think you'll be too thrilled on the day when I finally 'taketh away.'"

Soul's face went ghostly pale. "You wouldn't."

"I suggest you don't test me." Despite the seriousness of her words, Maka kept her tone light. Soul managed not to flinch as she patted him on the shoulder. "Besides, Programs don't reproduce sexually, I imagine. After all, I _wrote_ most of you, so I don't see how you would need your junk anyway."

A small frown formed on Soul's face. "Programs don't reproduce sexually, no. But that doesn't mean that there's no need for sex."

Maka laughed. "You do know what sex is, right?"

"Of course I do!" Soul's tone was defensive, his raised voice stinging on her sore eardrums. She was taken aback by the strength of his response, but before she could rise to his verbal challenge, he backed off. "It took us a while to figure it out; Stein and I spent several Update cycles going through your stories, trying to decode the workings of it. From what we could tell, it's not just for reproduction."

His earnestness calmed Maka's mirth. She had kept _all_ of her eBooks on that flash drive, including her stockpile of bad romance novels that she read on nights when just ice cream wasn't enough. Maka cringed as it occurred to her that Soul's conception of coitus was based entirely on purple prose and exaggeration.

"No." Her tone was thoughtful. "Where I come from, it's not just for reproduction. In fact, I'd say the majority of it isn't. But I can tell you that what you read in those books isn't indicative of the way it is in the real world. Sex is…complicated."

"Evidently so." His mouth thinned, a look of displeasure growing on his face. "Stein told me that he was going to gather more data on the subject and share his findings…but he managed to avoid the subject whenever possible afterward."

"For most people, it's a very private thing." 'Most people' being the conditional phrase; Maka was not looking forward to leaving the System and having to deal with Black*Star, who had evidently decided to camp out in her apartment. While Maka was grateful that he was watching over her, her friend would likely clean out what little was left in her fridge, and when she returned, he would drag her to dinner to regale her with tales of his programming and sexual endeavors. Those conversations often ended with him trying to set her up with another one of his stupid friends. His last suggestion, an already balding attorney by the name of Ox, had been so heinous that Maka had sworn off dating indefinitely.

Almost a full year afterward, Maka was nearly ready to recant, but the Resonance had swiftly taken over her life and swept away any chance of romance with it. Yet no matter how bad her love life had become, Maka had never expected that she would be debating the role of sex with a computer program.

Soul seemed baffled as Maka broke out into quiet giggles. He was holding eerily still—due to the lack of breathing— and watching her with wide, glowing eyes. Noticing this, she waved dismissively in his direction.

"It's nothing…I'm just laughing at how weird this situation is. I never thought that I'd be having this conversation." She stretched out a hand to pat him on the shoulder. "I promise that once we get everything straightened out, we'll have a more informative conversation on the matter."

Soul brightened, the light of his eyes seeming to luminesce a deeper red.

"Though," Maka interjected, not wanting him to get his hopes up, "I might not be the best person to ask about it. My experiences haven't been too great or numerous." She shrugged. "I might have to set you up to talk with Black*Star." Soul flinched at this and Maka remembered the insane volume of her friend's message. "Or I could just hook you up to the internet and then you'd be good to go."

Soul cocked his head to the side when she mentioned internet. "Is the internet the interface for linking to other systems?"

"In a way," Maka said. She shifted her weight onto one hip, tapping at her thigh with Black*Star's message. "It's like a world network that everyone can access. I have no idea what it might look like for programs, though. Still, this conversation is for later. If we don't respond quickly enough, Black*Star might get it in his head to try and send us another message." They shared a look of horror. "Where is the terminal where I can respond to this message?"

"Here." Soul turned to the wall beside him and quickly swiped his palm against it. A faint chiming sound ran through the room and part of the wall folded down, revealing a small keyboard and a screen built into the wall. "The interface is simple—just type here and then press the enter button to send the message. The terminal will seal itself until another message is received."

Maka nodded. "I can change that. And besides, Star's chatty. He'll respond pretty quickly after I send him something. We won't be waiting long, especially since he's got nothing else to do but eat my food and laugh at my bloody face." Soul moved to take the paper from her grasp as she stepped in front of the keyboard. She gave him a questioning glance.

"It'll archive itself after you send a reply." He set the small tube on the table that Maka had coded earlier. "Although frankly, I'd rather not go back and listen to this one again."

"Frankly, I'd rather not have to listen to Star talk ever," Maka replied. "But he knows his stuff. There's no one else I'd rather have on the other end of the computer if my life is on the line." Hands hovering above the keyboard, she stared at the black screen, considering how to phrase her response. Something nagged in the back of her mind, fuelling her hesitation.

"Soul?" Though she tried to keep her tone neutral, her hesitance drew out the syllables like a person on a rack.

"Hm?"

"You said you can listen to the archives again? That you can play the messages back so that you can hear them?"

Movement in her peripheral vision. At first Maka thought it might have been a nod, but the delay in his response made her turn. Soul was shifting, obviously uncomfortable; their eyes met for a brief moment before his fell to the floor. The downward gaze lit up his face with a pink glow.

"Yeah." The word was accented by the scuffing of his feet.

Asking the next question seemed almost unnecessary, so obvious was the security program's embarrassment, but Maka felt the compulsion to know.

"How often did you listen to the messages?"

She could hear the gentle humming of the lights, the silence was so thick. Soul stopped fidgeting, holding perfectly still as he bored holes into the floor with his laser eyes. What could have been minutes or hours passed before he finally spoke.

"Often. They...filled the silence." He held himself so tense, he might as well have been made out of stone. Maka reached out, letting her fingers rest on his shoulder.

"I'm glad," she murmured, a smile curving at her lips. "You deserved far more companionship than I supplied for you."

* * *

She kept her reply message brief:

_Star, this is Maka. Things are more complicated here than I expected. See if you can run a diagnostic on the system—look for the St/In program and see if it's functional. If it isn't, see if you can debug it. Please don't fiddle with the Meister or SOUL programs. That could put my life in danger._

_Also, please don't type in all caps. I still have eardrums here and you're gonna shatter them if you keep that up._

* * *

I'm working on chapter V, I swear.


End file.
